Tag Archives: bloody fantasy

FIVE

He woke up to the sound of melodious squawking and bright rays of white-lilac light. He’d left the window open, and a bird had pushed the curtains aside, letting in a stream of morning glare.

It hopped on the sill and continued to squawk, chirrup and yap to some kind of half-tune. The bird was about a hand high, purple-feathered with a hook beak and a tall, jagged white crest. It shifted feet constantly, cocking its head at him.

A trill, Jay’s mind remembered. Native to Appalia . . . Is that where I am?

He got up, stretched, and shooed the trill away. It yapped again, and then took off, the curtains left flapping behind. He opened them wider, letting in the expanse of the day. There were not many people walking the thoroughfare, and those that did blinked and squinted in the sun. He had slept early and he had woken early, and Nohaven was not a morning town.

A new day, a new world.

A big grin came to his face, and then turned into a grimace as he caught the smell of what could only be himself. He had slept in his clothes and he stank of sweat. He resolved to find a way to wash himself as soon as possible. For now, he removed his shirt and ran the tap, splashing water on his face, neck and pits.

A glint in the corner stole his attention. It was a mirror laid on the floor. He saw the hooks above the basin and realised it had been taken down for some reason. Perhaps the last occupant did not like their own reflection. He picked it up and put it back in place, then he stood and stared.

Whether he felt a chill or a shuddering warmth he could not say, perhaps both. A shiver certainly passed along his spine, but he would not say he felt unpleasant. Looking at a completely different reflection to what you have been used to your entire life is an experience some would call disturbing, others mesmerising, and they’d both be right.

He’d seen bits of him before, of course. He’d seen his arms, looked down at his torso, and been aware of his face in that vague, shadowy way people perceive themselves without a reflection, the blur of the nose and the cheeks and mouth with a presence so permanent to our vision that we forget they are there. He’d almost seen his face reflected in Sav’s eyes.

Here, though, was the full article, and minus the cracks in the mirror it was as clear and defined as it could ever be. He felt like he was looking through a window into another world, seeing another person mimicking his movements.

Then both of you are in another world, for this side of the mirror sure ain’t Kansas.

His face stared back at him, mockingly. A smirk lined his face, carrying up to the dark, glittering eyes. Stop laughing at yourself, he told himself sternly, but he couldn’t help it. His mouth opened in a rogue’s grin, and he shook his head. The man in the reflection did the same.

The same red markings, the tribal wine stains that careened over his body were present on his face. They lined his cheeks and brow like war paint, and yet the effect was more, well, wild, wild and mystical, than savage.

At least I don’t have a red nose.

He spent long minutes inspecting himself, dividing between marvelling at his skin design – the patterns made him want to call them extensive tattooing, but they were all-natural (just look at those hands), and miraculous for it – and his new face: a tough, dark-eyed and somewhat Middle-Eastern looking face, an on-the-dark-and-dirty-side-of-handsome face. He pleased himself thinking it possessed a kind of heroic villainy.

He resolved to let his hair, a stallion black mane on top, grow at the shaved sides, before he would untie the knot that held it back. Facial hair, too. A face like this needed some thick stubble. That’s razors off the shopping list, and good thing too, for a man with no money.

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out four tiny coins. Scratch that, I have four jackals. Something tells me they’re not worth a loaf of bread.

The coins were replaced, but the hand was found moving inward. One last thing to check.

Jay glanced at the door. There was no lock, but it was at least firmly shut. It wasn’t entirely reassuring, but he couldn’t see why someone would barge in on someone else’s rented room. Unless it’s Savvi? But then again – the voice continued, in a sleazy kind of way – maybe her catchin you pants down is exactly the kind of –

‘Shut up,’ Jay said out loud. But he pulled down his pants anyway. He was, after all, still a man in a man’s body. And there are some things a man’s gotta know.

He stood there, no shirt and his pants around his ankles, a stupid smile plastered to his face (but it’s not so stupid, is it? It’s better than the last guy’s smile, remember that? . . . No) as he looked at and touched himself with investigative measure, inflicted with the kind of small amazement that beds well with amusement.

Fronting this amusement, however, there came first relief. Jay was relieved to see that his package didn’t look vastly different to what he was used to. The thing that struck him most, quite aside from the size (his grin increased, although his only comparison beyond the hints of Jay’s memories were those of Earth men), and the single (much larger) nut, was the bendiness; it was quite pliable even when hard, he noticed, and almost stayed in the positions you left it, like plasticine. It had that rubbery quality, both look and touch. The head was tapered slightly. Apart from that, though, it was both recognisable and appreciable as a cock and balls. Thank god for evolutionary similarities, and not giving me tentacles. The only immediate sense of alien was that the whole area was a dark, streaky red.

He enjoyed himself for a while manipulating himself into vague turns, revelling like a child with a toy snake or one of those bendable figurines. He had only meant to check himself out, but found himself quickly carried away.

There was a pressure, an insistence in his lower body that he hadn’t really noticed until its sudden absence. He felt clearer, and he did some stretches as he washed out the sink, wondering at how he could take the time to masturbate, given his utterly incredible situation, and all the things around to discover. But there’d been that urge. His body seemed to belong to that of a wild man turned teenager.

The stretching felt good. He’d always hated exercise before. But now his muscles were strong, and he felt powerful.

He put his clothes back on, gave one final, eager glance in the mirror – a glance that turned into a searching look – and left the room.

The clerk audibly sighed as Jay walked down the stairs. He was tight-lipped as Jay smiled at him in an attempt to be friendly.

‘Yes?’ the clerk said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

‘Good morning. I was hoping for a shower. Well, to wash myself.’

The clerk sniffed. ‘I am sure you need it. Well. The washroom is out that door.’

‘Oh, good. Is there hot water?’

‘Do we look like a Sturm chamberhouse?’

‘Um, no. I guess not. Thanks.’ Jay pushed through the door. Behind a curtain there was a series of bronze pipes that twisted in wheels before joining up to a spout that hung overhead. Jay found a valve and turned it. A crank increased the pressure until a steady light rainfall of water pattered down into a drain below. It wasn’t cold, more a lukewarm temperature that, if not exactly enjoyable, didn’t make his teeth chatter.

After his shower, he replaced his baggy brown pants (there had been no undergarments) and his boots (sockless, but something about the make of the boots made his feet feel just fine without them; even on his journey to Nohaven his feet had not sweated. In the shower he’d noticed a rubbery hardness to his feet. They were as red as his hands, making his only socks skin-deep). He gave his shirt a cautious smell, but it seemed okay; it had been only him carrying the scent. Perhaps in this world they actually made shirts that resisted odours, or just sweat. Not that the shirt smelled like a rose garden; it spoke to his nostrils of horse, and sand, and a slight spice that he couldn’t place, but felt oddly comforting in the same way home does.

The clerk was gone when he returned, and Jay left the rest house and emerged into the light. He was surprised at how quickly he was becoming accustomed to the colour, although the purple-ringed sun still sent a shiver through his body whenever he looked up. Everybody looked slightly different outside than inside – but then he supposed that was true on Earth, too. There was a transformative quality about it – something that lent a faintly mystical, secretive, almost furtive air to everything – although he had as yet little comparison, for he had not seen this outside world in Earth’s pale light.

He made to go over to the bar, but found himself wandering. After all, he reasoned, she might not even be up yet. He walked along the thoroughfare, and then aimlessly through the town, along dusty streets, turning corners, turning heel and walking back on himself. He drifted in a daze, entranced with no small measure of wonder. People stared at him strangely, for he looked at things like a man born anew.

As he walked his usurped memory offered up morsels, shadows of remembrance. There was the Bone Bin, a windowless establishment – if establishment would ever fit such a jumble of timber. It had been made with boards and bits of boards, stakes and sticks – all made from some kind of – the white gumba tree – and affixed all over with thousands of bent nails. The wood lay crooked off each other, broken planks attached more by spirit than strength to mere shards. It was a ribcage of a house, and seemed to come in layers: for there were many gaps between the bones, but inside he could make out a second shell, one that seemed just as pale and hapless. Inside, he knew, they smoked every kind of smoke there was, and the air within seemed to float with ghosts.

On his left now came the red doors of the brothel, The Drain (his nose wrinkled at the sign). Opposite was a throng of small black children arguing over a furry ball that rolled about on its own volition – a bracker-ball, livin games to some. The leader was taller than the rest, with a gap where his nose should have been. His sunburst eyes flared as he caught sight of Jay, and waved to him. Jay waved back. That’s Jonner, a ragman. He’s alright. He don’t wanna kill you.

There were Appalian mountain men, with their curly hair and square-cropped beards, and silver-haired wardancers with their long locks and naked, studded bellies. He was passed by a couple of cowpokes he knew only by name – Jag and Burl – and reputation as bad news to all sizeable women. There were stalls selling produce of all colours, some that smelled sweet, some like the soil, and some that stank like rotting fish (fasher beans). There was a pink, hairless creature like a bony mole rat the size of a greyhound – erm, somethin, a sab, saber, no, cather-, catmol, no, I’ll get back to you – that skulked past him with arched shoulders, led on a leash by a high-hatted woman with dangling earlobes. He was reminded of that dog from yesterday, that six-legged dog, except it was called a – a dog – oh, okay.

More than not, he simply felt déjà vu, and Jay’s catacombs of memory obstinately turned its back on his questions. If he remembered, it came naturally, in slices, pages so torn they might as well be shreds. He could not force it. Even when he knew a name, or a purpose to something, it was not a real understanding, not a memory he could connect to as though it was his own. It was as though reading about something in a book a long time ago – except the book was in him, and the long time ago only ended yesterday.

Bad news in that How Not to Kill Yourself won’t come out in paperback this month as expected – the publishing company Microcosm found a load more zines to sell and figured to get through them before it came out. Good news is that gives us more time to get HNTKY shipshape.

Anyway, here’s the seventh lil part to the funny, sexy and bloody sci-fi/fantasy/western/adventure novel WULF.

FOUR

A gush of warm blood soaked his hand. He twisted the blade deeper, felt a sickening snag, and ripped through it with the saw-edge. His hand was almost inside, and the blood, eager in its will to leave the body, ran all the way to his elbow. There was a foul smell: a symptom of a rended stomach.

The woman made a small imitation of a grunt, an echo of surprise. Her lips hung loose and her eyes were bright and looked right into his as she died.

With one aggressive pull his Rathian knife was free, and the woman slipped to the ground. Jay touched his side. He was bleeding himself; her sickle had been . . . provoking. Unlike her, though, he would certainly live.

He wiped his knife (Ugly was its name, carved into the handle, for ugly was its work) on her breeches, and started to look through her pockets. He found what he was looking for: a drawstring bag of yellow jewels. They shone like bright little suns of piss.

Jay placed the bag in an inside pocket of his jerkin, scanned the horizon, and walked back to his horse. Khyber stood like a shadow under a small stunted alacia. There was a light pink summer blossom in the topmost branches, and it had decorated the ground around him. Some of the petals lay on his back and adrift in his mane, but he made no move to shake them off. His body was sleek black velvet and very warm to the touch, and the hair poured down his shoulders like lava.

‘That’s three down Khy,’ Jay said as he hoisted himself up. He needed no stirrups or saddle. ‘Three down, eight to go.’

Khyber made no noise in reply, but he lifted his head and trotted towards the horizon.

He remembered.

He saw faces of all the people he had killed, faces of the people who had tried to kill him. They were mostly the same, but not always.

He saw many women he had lain with, many women he had hunched against, thrust against, pulled forwards, bent over, women whose cheek he had touched and women who he had stripped: all those creatures whose morsels he had tasted. Women who had tried to murder him before, or afterwards. The men who had interrupted, to their shame and anger, and often to their mortal regret.

He remembered why Sal at the bar didn’t like him.

He pictured his laugh: part of him cringed, and part of him didn’t care; only the parts were blending, sipping at each other and spitting back.

He saw perfection, and as he did storm clouds gathered and the lilac in the sky darkened to a bruised magenta, and she became shadowed and lost to him.

Under the Circle’s Shadow . . .

He saw horses rearing in fire and flame as guns cracked around him and cannon fire threw up volcanos of dirt. He remembered scrabbling, coughing, trying to make out the shapes in the smoke and the sprays of blood, and the endless, endless cries.

He heard the kill, kill chant that rumbled through the very soil, rising to bounce back and forth off the high yellow rocks that looked down on them. Kill, kill, kill from hundreds of the lizard like things, the Grey Ark warriors crawling stickily over the stones and splashing in the twin streams that wound towards him. He remembered a great brick of a man, dark red mottling covering his back in scenes of Hell, standing tall and beating his bare chest, screaming ‘KILL! KILL!’ back at them, raising fat double chambered guns wrapped in leather strips and firing slug after pounding slug at those grey-green fish-people that continued to chant, hurling spears like javelins and some firing their own guns: loathsome squid rifles and sharp anorexic weapons loaded with metal scrap.

He remembered hiding, waiting with a knife in his teeth and two cocked pistols pointing at the slip of daylight that broke the cave wall. Waiting for those filmed yellow eyes to block the light, the first reptilian gaze to be shattered into sunken yolks. Kill, kill, kill. As the others lay dead. Their Red Serant – his name was Babric Twofist, and he had really loved those guns, what had he called them again? That’s it: Bet Fist and Babby Fist. Bet & Babby, the Two Fists – his head was now no longer a part of his body. Not that he’d felt it: he’d already taken three harpoons through one way and out the other.

He saw Savvi, lit under the glow of a blue lamp, the light making her darker, and colder in that beautiful way, like an icicle. They were in a tent, drinking heavily, and it was warm, so warm, they had taken off their shirts . . . He saw himself pawing at her, leering and laughing and making crude come-ons into jokes, and jokes into come-ons. He showed her his new sword; a wicked thing, a saber as yet without a name, and perhaps too nice for one. He showed her his guns and he showed her Ugly. She seemed most interested in the knife, purring in his ear that she liked ugly things.

‘You won’t like me then,’ he’d said. She’d laughed at him and batted his hands away. When he came on too strong, pushing her to the ground, she explained to him, with a smile on her face, how very quickly and easily she could give his penis a snip – well, she added, serrated was a better word, or sliced.

The next day he had woken up with a saber without a name (he never did give it one before it broke, but then again nor did he with any guns; only Ugly carried the honour), two guns, his knife, some ammo, and a furious libido. He was minus all his money (and it had been quite a lot at that point), almost all of his food, the last bottle of vhiskat, and the tent.

At no point did Savvi appear to make him breakfast.

He dreamt, and he saw, and he heard, and he remembered. They were not pure memories, only their shades, their fragments – or more correctly their imprints, for they were left behind in the body, ghost copies for the new owner. Something inside was pushing them at him, aggressive but not hostile. He tried to grab at them, but there was so much, and all he could think was heat and sex and of two pistols thick with rust, chambers revolving slower and slower, never stopping. Then his mind saw a stream of gore, and of old friends with sightless black eyes. He thought The Eyes of Rath and he thought Grey Ark and he thought Alexia.

A ring of mountains, a swarm of peaks like the black hunch of crow wings.

Savvi the harlot that never gave.

A tapestry of fucks surrendered.

Cold winds and –

Alexia.

Much of what he had dreamt, much of those half-memories that had bubbled up from inside his brain (a brain that had long been used to another mind, and still carried its luggage, still had its pictures hung on the walls), in fact, almost none of it would be remembered the next day. At least not at first.

There was one dream that would keep coming, and it surfed around his other dreams, waiting for its turn.

Eventually it got impatient, and it swooped in.

He looked at his alarm clock after he’d put his book down and turned the light out. 3:32. The sheets felt unclean, just like they had felt unclean the night before. There was a faint glow in the corner of his room; he never knew the name of it, only that it didn’t need batteries because it charged itself with daylight. Tucked away as it was, away from the window, it never got much of the solar power it desired – but it was never going to provide enough light to read by, anyway.

Sleep came, as it always did, with excruciating delay. But, thankfully (and perhaps it had been that rare walk to the shops earlier), in an hour he was asleep.

There was a battlefield of broken cars, all used wrecks, all grey and rotting with weeds that cracked and burst like dust when the birds landed.

The birds were diseased ravens with gristly red veins that throbbed over white feathers, and all of them would fly up silently wherever the green eyed man appeared.

The green eyed man was –

‘Wait,’ said a voice. The voice of a young woman. ‘How do I do this . . . Oh, it’s on. Well . . . This is weird, but here goes.’

The cars were all gone, so were the birds, so was the man. There was just the sand, and the lilac sky, and the words that were written as she spoke.

Under the Circle’s shadow

Inside the happiest hawk

Beds the key that is hidden

The key that unlocks the door

The wind took up as she chanted. Something somewhere rattled.

When she was done, there was a pause, broken only by the wind. Then the voice laughed, and said, ‘I expect you want more than that, don’t you? No problem, I’ve been meaning to fix this . . . I mean a whole year, what a waste of time . . .’

There was another pause.

‘Shit,’ said the woman. ‘Sorry, gotta go. Good luck, please don’t hate me.’ There was a click, and then the world exploded.

I’ve been working on the sequel to WULF, called SLADE. It’s been hard to find a suitable extract for this site that won’t spoil anything, especially for those who haven’t read any of WULF (but might do one day), but I think this will be fine…

He leaned closer, his back permanently hunched as his fingers skittered across the holographic keyboard, for all the world looking as though he was dancing puppets or playing the piano beyond mastery.

One of his hands reached down and plucked a piece of nojo from the desk, deftly peeling it between two fingers and sticking it to the side of his bald head at the same time as another hand did the same with another piece. His round amber eyes flickered for a moment, as he felt the rush. The drug kept his mind working as fast as his fingers.

Nobody could type as fast as a spider. Not with six long spindle-fingers for each thin and hairy arm. Six arms in full, sprouting from a fat, sunken body as black as pitch. Thirty-six fingers to dance across the huge array of holo-keys of every known alphanumeric character and symbol, thrice replicated. Thirty-six fingers to play with people’s lives.

There was a knock at the door and he paused, his hands arching in mid-air. ‘Come in,’ he said, his high voice like the screech of a child.

A woman walked in, her own hands stiff behind her back. ‘Spider, two of our men have been killed. The culprits are a man and a woman unknown to us. Their dress is strange and barbaric, and the man is covered in extensive tattooing.’

He did not turn from his screens. There was a camera in the room and he looked at the woman on the respective monitor. His vibrant orange eyes blinked slowly inwards from the sides like closing elevator doors.

‘Interesting,’ he said. He paused, letting the silence reign through the room, drinking in the woman’s tension.

‘Get eyes on them,’ he said. ‘And patch me in.’

‘Yes, Spider. Will that be all?’

‘Yes.’

The woman nodded her head sharply and left. Her relief was palpable in her step.

The Spider turned his attention to the rest of the screens that covered every inch of the wall. Zoomed out it might look like a compound eye, like that of a giant fly. In front of him were reams of scrolling data, data that would never pause, never stop.

Apologies for the delay, I’ve been waiting on the cover (which you can see below – well worth the wait!), but now I’m happy to say the science fantasy western WULF, the first book in The Fifth Place series, is now available as an ebook on Amazon.

The sixth part of my adult sci-fi/western novel WULF (previously called The Wulf and the Tiger). This follows directly on from the last part. The full novel will soon be available as an ebook on Amazon (and about time too!).

Warning: Quite a bit of bad language here. Blame Savvi. That’s just how she is.

‘You took your time,’ Sav said, long fingers with close-cut nails the colour of chocolate curled around a wide mug. She looked amused.

‘You left me! In the middle of nowhere!’

‘Oh, nonsense,’ she said. ‘You got back alright, didn’t you?’

‘I nearly died! Why couldn’t you just have led me back?’

‘Because you know the way. Or should have done.’

‘Well I didn’t. I don’t.’

‘I see,’ she said, in a bored tone. ‘But you still made it.’

‘Only because of the tiger -’

‘A tiger?’

‘A tiger led me back.’

‘Of course it did. I don’t see one with you, though.’

‘It’s sleeping just outside of town. Or at least it was when I left it.’

‘I remember -’ he paused. ‘I remember scraps, just like half-formed ideas, or dreams. Many things seem faintly familiar. You, for instance. I feel I have this connection to you. That doesn’t quite explain it, and maybe it’s just that you saved my life, even though you didn’t exactly stick it through, but -’

‘That’s sweet honey, but you’re not the first man to tell me you have a connection to me, or whatever. I suppose you’ve also forgotten all the times you’ve tried to get into my pants?’

A blush failed to materialise. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in what he thought might pass for an abashed tone.

She stared. ‘Who the fuck are you and what have you done with Jay?’

He shrugged. ‘Am I right in thinking I can trust you?’

Sav laughed, the kind of unsubtle laugh that’s done right in someone’s face. That face being his own. ‘Trust me?’ she cried gleefully. ‘Listen my poor bitch, you can’t trust me an inch. And that’s an inch more than you can offer!’

Jay sighed. The woman was hard work, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It struck him as funny – odd funny, not ha-ha funny – that he could consider himself a beggar when it came to a lady – awoman, he corrected himself, not a lady – of such looks. Erotic appeal dripped from her, right down to the semi-contemptuous expression she fixed him with.

‘People here are strange,’ he said, looking back to his glass and taking another sip.

‘Speak for yourself, cock-smith.’

‘Can’t you be nice? It’s already a really fucking hard and confusing day, and I’m completely by myself here.’

‘Poor baby.’

‘What I meant was that, well, when I came into town everybody looked at me. I mean everybody. Do they not like outsiders in this town?’

‘Honey, they looked at you because they know you. You’ve been in this town for months. That, and you look like shit.’

‘They can’t know me . . . A man with a big moustache pulled me out of the water trough and didn’t know me, he looked fixing to kill me.’

‘That’ll be Remembrance Ed. Edder Van Took. He’s only got the short term memory. And he hates just about everyone, least of all anybody darker or redder than him. Sometimes he remembers people, but only if he really, really hates them.’

‘Oh.’ Jay took another drink. ‘But if they know me, why all the stares? Just for looking a bit rough and thirsty?’

‘No. Because you were hauled outta here your hands behind your back kicking and screaming early this morning.’

‘By who! Oh. Ah.’ He tapped his fingers on his glass. ‘So they’re all dead then?’

‘Well, the three brothers are, yes.’

‘They were brothers? Oh.’

‘So it’s just the dad left.’

‘Shit.’

‘I’d say he’s old and won’t be a bother, but he got their mother pregnant at twelve. That’s him twelve, I should say. She was a lot older and dead now. And he’s still going, leading his boys.’

‘Can I talk to him about it?’

‘He’s a murderous cunt and his three sons have just died. He won’t have heard about it yet, but he will. You had a hand in one, he’s gonna believe you had a hand in all three. What do you think?’

‘I’ve really got enough to be worrying about. What did I do for them to want to kill me? I mean originally?’

‘You fucked their sister.’

‘Is that all? I mean, their sister? Christ, I bet she was a bit of a sight. I hope she didn’t have a beard too.’

‘I doubt it would have stopped you.’

‘You make me sound like an animal. Wait – she did want to be fucked, didn’t she?’

‘You tell me.’

Jay felt his shoulders slump. ‘I really don’t know anything.’

Sav clapped him on the back cheerfully. ‘There you go, you do know something! You have remembered that you know nothing. This makes you as complete as you ever were.’ She drained her cup and got up. ‘For crying out loud, finish your whiskey already, you wet fucking blanket.’

‘I have a feeling -’ he started.

‘Better stop it then,’ she interrupted, picking up the glass and tipping it to his face. Before he knew it the last mouthfuls of whiskey-substitute was speeding towards his mouth. He gulped twice and Sav let go of the glass; it bounced off his knee and hit the floor, smashing.

His throat roared with fire and instant bile that he struggled to push away. The broken glass hadn’t concerned the other patrons, but the bartender was already over, shouldering past Jay with a broom in her hands.

‘I got it Savvi,’ she said with a beaming smile that crinkled the corners of two rather beautiful big eyes.

‘Thanks, Sal,’ Sav replied. ‘Sorry about Jay Wulf.’

‘It’s fine, fine,’ Sal said, not looking at Jay. ‘Up to his old tricks, I assume?’

‘If you mean being a dick, then yes, why stop now?’ Sav put a hand firmly on Jay’s back and pushed him out the bar before he could respond.

‘I’ve seen you drink better men and women under the table,’ Sav muttered as they returned to outside. The lilac sky had deepened and reddened to a rich magenta. The sun was hidden behind the peaked two-floored building signposted REST HOUSE, giving the edges of the dwelling a vibrant purple glow. It was on the other side of the street, and she steered him in its direction.

‘Tell me something, Sav.’ When she didn’t reply, he turned to her. ‘Savvi?’

‘Uhuh.’

‘When you see me, what you see?’

‘Is this a test?’

‘No. Yes.’

‘I see a cunt.’

‘No, I mean . . . What am I? What . . . race . . . species . . .’

She looked at him askance. ‘You’re a Rathian . . . a human.’

‘A human,’ he repeated. ‘How interesting.’

‘Why is that interesting?’

Jay hesitated, and Sav pushed open the door to the rest house. It swung in with a long, coffin creak. ‘Where I’m from,’ he said under his breath. ‘They call me and people like me human, too.’

‘Have you always been this mad?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘More so recently. You better get used to it.’

Jay waited as the two of them stood by the door. A small spectacled man behind a desk was filling in some forms, and hadn’t investigated his new customers.

‘Well?’ Sav said. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Oh. I thought, I thought -’

‘Are you an invalid? Do it yourself.’

Jay approached the desk, and pulled out the rest of the money from his pockets. ‘Erm, one night, please.’

‘He’ll stay for as long as,’ Sav said. ‘And pay once a week.’

The man peered out at them like a mole. ‘Do I have your word on that, ma’am?’

‘No. If he doesn’t, kick him out. Just don’t come to me asking for money. You won’t get it.’

‘Do you not think it better to go someone where else? A place perhaps where I haven’t fucked the owner’s wife? Or sister, daughter, mother, horse, or any other relation of.’

Sav put her finger on her lower lip and pulled it down thoughtfully, showing the bottom array of little white stones. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that gives us many options’.

‘Come on. Can’t I stay with you?’

‘Are you joking?’

‘Fifteen queens,’ repeated the clerk. ‘Please.’

‘Stop faffing, my horny little beast boy.’ Sav pinched his side and he yelped, dropping a coin. ‘All he wants is the money. Pay up and trouble over.’

Jay picked up the coin and laid them all out on the desk. ‘This is what I have.’

‘You have five kings and ten queens,’ the clerk counted. ‘And four jackals,’ he sniffed.

‘Good. That sounds like enough.’

‘Well it isn’t.’

‘Really?’ Jay pawed at the coins. ‘How many queens to a king?’

‘There are five kings to one queen.’

‘Oh. Um. So I have . . . eleven queens. And four jackals. Which makes . . .’

‘Eleven queens and four jackals.’

‘Unfortunate,’ Sav said. ‘Give him your gun.’

‘My gun? Won’t I be needing that?’

‘You’ll just have to take your chances, until you find another.’

‘Whereabouts am I to find another gun, without any money?’

‘Perhaps you can wrestle one off the next person who tries to kill you.’

‘Sounds great,’ Jay said. He pulled out the gun and laid it on the table with the coins. ‘The gun for the deposit. The queens for the week.’

The clerk wrinkled his nose. ‘Not the finest specimen in the world.’

‘Will it do for the deposit?’

‘Of course it fucking will,’ Sav said. ‘It’s still a gun. People usually want their guns back.’

‘I know the feeling,’ Jay said.

The clerk stooped and placed the gun under the counter, inside a box that he locked with a click. Then he swept the coins off the counter and into his hands, before carefully depositing them one by one (counting all the time) into the till.

‘Your room is upstairs, last on the right.’

‘Do I get a key?’

‘No. There are no keys.’

‘How am I supposed to get in?’

‘You could try pushing,’ the man said flatly, in that kind of polite sarcasm aggravated service staff were so adept at the universe over. ‘That usually works. If that fails you could always try giving it a good hard ram. It seems to be your go-to move, don’t you think? It certainly served you well with my wife.’

‘I’ll be off now,’ Jay said. ‘Sorry again.’

‘Stop apologising for things,’ Sav said. ‘It’s getting boring.’

He turned and noticed she wasn’t following him up the staircase.

‘I’m going back to the bar,’ she said, noticing his expression. She was sat up on the desk; the clerk was trying to busy himself with his forms, and not lose himself in the contours of her lower back and sides that beckoned smooth and honeyed in the gaps in her clothing. ‘And no, I am not sharing a room with you. Not now, not ever.’

‘I didn’t mean -’

‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

‘Where will I find you tomorrow?’

‘Bar.’

‘Alright,’ Jay said. ‘And Sav . . . Thank you.’

‘Pft,’ she said, and she blew him a kiss, smirked, and was gone.

Jay trod with heavy feet up to his room. He still felt awful. He pushed open the door, worried for a second that he would intrude upon some barbaric couple mid-coitus who would nail him to the wall and make him watch.

Don’t be an idiot, he thought. They’d probably just shoot you.

The room was empty, though. He was going to consider that the room really couldn’t be much plainer, but that’s before he noticed the sink. A bed and a sink. That’s enough luxury for today. He rushed to it, turning the single tap on. There was a protesting groan, a rumble, and then to his relief came a trickle of not entirely lukewarm water. He cupped his hands and drank every time they filled up, until he had satiated himself and then some.

He lay on the bed. The door had closed itself. There was a flat white pillow on the bed, and a brown woollen blanket, but no sheets or duvet. He wasn’t about to complain. He got up only to close the curtains, barely registering the now bloody-red sky. What he did see was down on the street; the dog that he had seen from a distance yapping and rushing about was back.

Only it wasn’t a dog. For a start, it had six legs.

Jay shut it out of his sight, and fell back on the bed. The room was starting to lose focus, and he felt a great shuddering yawn run through him, a yawn that never left his mouth.

That creature wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.

Those little black demon spots appeared again. They always danced away from him, seeming to be mocking him.

The sky was purple today.

He felt heavy, like he could sink right through the mattress. The bed propped him up only in the sense a still ocean propped up a floating body.

I’m on another planet.

I’m on another planet, and I’m not even me.

Jay felt the room spin, and his eyes closed, but whether it was by his own volition or not he wasn’t sure.

An extract from my adult sci-fi/fantasy/western novel The Wulf and the Tiger. This does not follow on from the previous part, but is a later extract. Please bear in mind it’s a first draft work in progress, and there may be mistakes not yet caught.

Jay bumped into Savvi, and Alexia into him. Savvi had stopped.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

Nobody answered, and he felt a touch on his other shoulder that, if he was a lesser man than he was now, would have made him piss himself. It’s Dol Sander. It’s Dol Sander. He’s telling you to shut up.

Jay listened. The blackness around him seemed to swallow all noise.

There it was. A slight slapping sound, like wet leather. He could not tell how close it was, only that it was to his right. Perhaps there was a passage that intersected with this one. Or maybe they were no longer in a passage at all, but they were in a vast hall. He had no way of knowing. Maybe Dol Sander was leading them past the sleeping quarters of hundreds of ghoums. The First Ones . . .

They stood frozen for what seemed like forever. Time as a measurable concept disintegrated, swallowed up by a bubble of empty night. His fingers dug into Savvi’s shoulder, and Alexia’s nails dug into his. He almost cried out loud when he felt something brush past his leg. It’s the tiger. It’s the fucking tiger. It’s furry, it’s the tiger. Why the fuck is the tiger moving? STOP MOVING YOU FURRY FUCK!

The scrabbling had disappeared into the distance, but still they were motionless. Eventually (and who knows how long it was in the end? An hour or a mere minute?) Dol Sander must have moved forward, for Savvi began to move also, and then they all were, a motley line of beings entirely out of their depth, walking on fear.

*

At first he thought he was imagining it, or that it was a trick of his vision. But no, there it was: light. It was very faint and low, but there was a green glow coming from up ahead. As they approached he began to make out the outlines of the others, the hand he waved in front of his face. The relief was palpable, but it was not to last.

The glow came from the rocks, he found. Some luminescent mineral. It was still barely enough to see by, but that was enough. He felt Savvi’s shoulders relax, and he let go. Alexia’s hand fell away from him.

Some kind of cave system, he thought at first, but as he looked around he saw the work of a fallen civilisation: sharp corners and smooth stones, crumbled doorways, pillars disappearing above them into oily heights. The glowing substance crawled and climbed over the place like weeds. Maybe it’s not a rock at all, maybe it’s some imitative fungus. Either way I’m thankful.

He was reaching out to touch one when Dol Sander stopped in front of them, a dagger silently appearing his hands. Jay looked past him and saw the ghoum.

It emerged from between two rocks with a slick, wet sound, its bald head bobbing from side to side like a moored boat. It shuffled closer, each of them holding their breath, staring directly at it or straight ahead in fixed terror. Jay was the former; he couldn’t keep his eyes off the creature. Dol Sander was right: it had no eyes, and only a small slit for a nose, but its ears were like deep gills cut into the sides of its face, and they seemed to tremble in the glowing darkness.

Its entire body was thin and fleshy, skin stretched over wasted muscles. Its hands and feet webbed, extended arms hanging loosely at its side. The way it moved seemed almost boneless.

Jay didn’t know what sound alerted it; someone must have breathed. Its head jerked up and it flopped, slopped towards them with a terrifying burst in speed. Its mouth yawned open displaying dripping gums and hundreds of needle-like teeth.

Everybody’s hands went to their weapons, but Dol Sander got there first. He flashed forward and the creature’s neck split open. Thick goo oozed out and the creature dropped – but not before it had made a hollow, reverberating groan, a disgusting oooooom noise that seemed cavernous.

Oooom, came the replies. Oooom. Ooooom.

‘Where are they coming from?!’ Alexia cried. ‘It’s everywhere!’

Ooooooom.

‘Silence, Alexia!’ Dol Sander said, his thin sword now clutched in his hand.

‘Too late now,’ Savvi said. ‘They’ve found us.’

‘It’s never too -’ started Dol Sander, but ducked as a pillar shattered by his head. If the creature’s dying call had seemed loud, the gunshot that boomed and echoed could have filled the world. It temporarily drowned out the ghoum calls, but as it faded they returned, tripled in number and in intensity.

‘Who the fuck was . . . It’s them!’ Dol Sander said, and they all turned with him to face what was behind.

‘Think they’ll band together with us against the ghoums?’ Jay said. He reached for his rifle but Dol Sander put his arm out and stopped him, dragging Jay to behind the pillar where Savvi and Alexia had darted. The tiger was already there, Alexia aggressively stroking his back, more likely for her comfort than his.

‘What do you think?’ Savvi said, hoisting her bow.

‘This is good,’ Dol Sander said. ‘No, it is. They will summon the ghoums. This was the plan. I had just hoped we would not have been with them at the time.’

‘So what, we run and hide?’

‘How quietly can you run?’

‘Never measured. You?’

They heard now a thum-thum-thum, and knew it as the hulk loping towards them, picking up speed with the single-minded force of a battering ram.

The fifth part of my adult sci-fi/western novel The Wulf and the Tiger. This follows directly on from the last part. Please bear in mind it’s a first draft work in progress (I’ve got much further than this part, though!).

THREE

The town came up first as a mirage. Only when Jay crawled closer did the clutter of shacks that occupied the long stretch of dry valley prove their firmness, their intent to stay.

His mind was screaming at him, but he wasn’t listening to it. He wasn’t listening to it because his throat was screaming louder. On hands and knees he shuffled through sand and along dusty rocks. The temperature was a little cooler now, but his head swam and he was starting to see dots that looked like a swarm of winged black demons coming down at him from far off in the sky.

He squinted and made out a few people in the street. There was a main thoroughfare that led along structures with signs like GUNSHOP and BAR – NO TROUBLE. The buildings were all made of a black wood that shined in the calming sun. A dog barked and raced from one side of the street to another.

Jay got to his feet slowly, groaning and shutting his eyes for a few seconds until the demons floated off. He looked behind him. The tiger was asleep. It had been noticeably impatient with him, and on this last crawling stretch it had simply laid down and shut its eyes.

Turning back his eye caught the promise of water. There was a trough where a few horses were tied, right at the edge of town. They took turns to gulp it gratefully – taller horses than he’d seen before, and slightly . . . pointier. There was a white mare with these big lazy pools for eyes, an imperious red with dark socks, and an exotic looking stallion as black as pitch, with flaming scarlet hair that burst all about him. He looked at Jay as he approached and seemed to nod. His hooves stamped the ground.

Jay was in no sense to avoid the horses, nor to play nice. He budged up beside the mare at the end, which whinnied at him, water dripping from its mouth. Then he sank to his knees and plunged his head into the trough. He barely noticed the taste of horse, only half-cared that the water was warm and had likely been sat out all day. Flies that sounded like fizzing soda hopped and skipped over his neck, and shoulders, and he let them. Under the water his gullet moved as he swallowed.

Just before he was ready to come up and drink with his hands he was pulled back and away by tough hands. He fell back, the hair that lay long about his forehead streaming little trails of trough water to the parched ground.

‘What in the name of fuck are you tryin’ to do?’ said a shadow over him.

Jay blinked. A man with a fat moustache and a bent hat was dragging him up to his feet.

‘I was thirsty,’ Jay said.

‘A lot of people get thirsty,’ said the man. ‘You know what they do? They go to the bar. They don’t try’n drown themselves in horse spit.’

‘Was desperate.’ Jay tried to brush his wet hair away from his face, and he wiped away the droplets that clung to his nose and chin.

‘Come in from the Wastes huh? Didn’t plan the journey? Look at the state of you. Tough but stupid, that’s it.’

‘I don’t know this place. At all.’

‘Yeah, well. This place is called Nohaven.’

‘It doesn’t sound too welcoming.’

‘That’s because it ain’t.’ The man stared at him with small eyes. ‘Go on, get. To the bar, to a bed, to the gunshop to blow your brains out, or right back the way you came, I don’t give one single golden fuck. Just get away from my horse and away from that trough. I ain’t havin’ to fish you out again when you’ve drowned and befouled the water for my ride.’ The man put a hand on its soft white coat.

‘I’ve already got a gun.’ Jay said. He pointed at his holster.

The small-eyed man snorted. ‘Call that a gun? I bet you could lay that piece of crap right against my forehead and pull the trigger and two seconds later we’d both be still standing wonderin’ where the bullet went.’

Jay’s hand played about his side, and the man opened his jacket slightly. ‘I dare ya,’ he said, as Jay glimpsed a bulging hunk of steel: an obese firearm strapped to his chest. Jay moved his hand from his holster to his waist and untied his shirt, walking off with feigned nonchalance as he wriggled back into it. He could feel the man’s eyes on the back of his neck.

The people were a motley scuffery of beaten jackets and shirts, plain half-cut dresses and makeshift skirts. Farmer shifts and fighting suits. Every outfit, every look seemed a hodgepodge, a DIY of appearance. They were everyone, it seemed, blacks and browns and reds, half-and-halves and the quartered, those whose pink or grey complexions were tinted or mottled a nearly seaweed green. There were the tattooed and there were the disfigured. There were even a couple of chalk-like figures – god knows how they didn’t tan under this sun.

A woman with lashes that curled out far from her face like spikes watched him, amber eyes flecked with crimson. As he drew closer he saw her carelessly tickling the two dozen knives that ringed her belt. A younger girl sat in the shadow of an overhang with an old man grinding blades. She looked about fifteen, with exceptionally pale blue eyes. Her hair hung white in four pigtails, and she stroked a gun that rested its butt on the ground and could well be nearly as tall as her standing. The old man glanced up, spat and went back to his work. His hair was tangled all the way down his back, and his mouth had been cut into a permanent scowl.

They watched him from all about, from windows and porch chairs, passing him in ones and twos on the thoroughfare; he was the outsider.

He walked into the bar. It was only slightly cooler in the shade; in here there was a kind of dank, heavy gloom, and a permeating odour of sweat and hard spirits. Jay’s eyes adjusted slowly. He imagined he had just walked into a saloon; that there might be a tinkling rag-time piano that suddenly stopped, and the faces of a dozen plus rogues turned to him in silence.

It wasn’t like that. They looked at him, but only for a second. There had been no music, only a constant hubbub of chatter running at different levels: the low murmurs and clandestine mumblings right up to raucous shouts and cat-calls. Just like outside, they were not cowboys, not exactly. There was the bandit in a number of them, there was no doubt about that and other tropes he could recognise – two prostitutes in the corner, or my name’s not (JAY WULF) – but nobody’s style he could easily label; he was reminded clearly of things from Earth and its history, and nothing here seemed particularly absurd or otherworldly in that regard, but there was nevertheless the unmistakeable feeling of something other; naturally developed and stained with the dust and labour of this land’s own history, and yet wholly new.

He sidled up to the bar in the most unobtrusive way he could manage, and found himself elbow-to-elbow with a middle-aged man with a square-ish bowler hat and a loosened tie, and all the demeanour of a merchant banker with more love for the drink than the job. Jay nodded at him and grinned – even my smile feels different, it feels more . . . wolfish – and the man shook his head, not making eye contact. Jay tried to look sympathetic, but the banker only shook his head again, raising his eyes only to stare wistfully into the faded bottle in front of him.

‘Well?’ The bartender was drumming her fingers; a motion of irritability not heard against the background noise.

‘Erm, whiskey,’ Jay said. ‘Please,’ he added, then regretting it as the barrel-bodied woman gave him a funny look.

He watched her pour it in front of him, a chest like two diving bells resting on the bar-top. He knew the word that had actually come out of his mouth wasn’t “whiskey”. The glass of muddy gold before him was only the nearest translation. He hoped it was nicer than neat whiskey; he’d only asked for the stuff to fit in, and could really have done with more water.

‘Three kings,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘That’ll be three kings you owe.’ She affixed a tried-and-true don’t-fuck-with-me expression and puffed herself up, not that any more notice could have been given to that full-buttocked chest. She may have been shorter than most of the patrons there, but she sure as sin was wider – and deeper – and even presuming no weapons with slugs the size of sword hilts lay within easy reach of those big, clasping hands, she could no doubt barrel most trouble out the door. A scar on her cheek stood testimony to at least one altercation she’d survived.

Jay dug into his pants pocket and found the red poker-chip coins he’d stolen off the dead men. It seemed that a few had gone missing, no doubt lost in his scrabbles. Now he could see that they were of three different sizes and abrasions; each textured uniquely to the touch.

‘Which one are the kings?’ he said.

The bar woman raised an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘The big ones.’

He plucked out three of them and deposited them in her outstretched hand. She closed her fist and quickly snapped it back, looked him up and down and turned away to serve another further down. Jay sipped his drink. He grimaced. Yep, that was as bad as whiskey. A dirty, warm whiskey carrying a flavour reminiscent of slightly off berry . . . one of the berries, one of the ones nobody remembered . . .

He picked up his glass and gave the liquid a swirl. There were waves of a darker colour, that glided phantasmal and elfin. He caught the reflection, and turned to his right, where she was sitting.

The man with the green eyes looked at the man with the green eyes. ‘How old are you?’

‘Six hundred, sir.’

‘You are very young.’

‘I know sir. I’m good at what I do, sir.’

‘When you get as old as me, you see a lot of mistakes in the universe. A lot of problems, especially when it comes to Reshuffles.’ He paused, then stroked his smooth head with a forefinger, as though slicking down invisible hair. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in the universe or out of it that can be surprise me. I’ve seen everything.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Find out what happened. If there’s a culprit, find them. And find whoever went missing. Nobody gets to leave the grid. And nobody is untraceable.’

‘He was from Earth-502, sir. His name is -’

The man with the green eyes looked coldly at his inferior. ‘I do not care what his name is. Find him.’

‘Yes sir.’

TWO

Any fool could tell you not to fall asleep beside a wild tiger, but Jay Wulf had gone and done just that. It wasn’t as though he’d planned to. There had been no point when he’d yawned and settled down, thinking ‘I’ll just close my eyes for a wink, I’m sure I’ll hear if the tiger gets up to maul me.’

It had merely been the case that one moment he was awake and the next, as the lilac sky deepened and the indigo clouds drifted back from the horizon, he was not. There was a sensation in his head of a whirlpool; circling it, and being sucked ever downwards.

His last thoughts were nothing concrete, merely a spiral of tigers of all colours, and the report of guns everywhere, and of alien technology, lasers and leviathan ships. And then just the desert, and the woman Sav coming from out the sand, swaying towards him, and how his insides breathed for her, how he ached.

Eventually the tiger closed its own eyes and began to purr next to him in sleep.

The mind of Jay Wulf was a mess. It stank – sweet smells and sour, all carrying a familiarity that he could not put his finger on. There was clutter everywhere; he moved through a room filled with pelts and ripped silk, with leather half cut into holsters and saddles. There was bloodstains on the floorboards and hung on the half rotting walls were guns and knives and swords. The furniture was a hodgepodge of old and new, and was piled high with trinkets and semi-valuable treasures. There was an old ship’s wheel resting against the wall, almost the size of him. A nearby fire burned low in a grate, casting flickers on the wheel that made it look like it was reliving past battles of sword and flame.

On blankets and fur strewn in the centre were several naked women. They were beautiful in that vague, dream-like way, where no one aspect can be concentrated on enough to provide any real kind of definition to the person, no sense that any part of who they were could survive awakening.

‘Hello, Jay,’ purred one of the women. Just like the tiger.

‘Hello,’ Jay replied. ‘Where am I?’

The women just smiled at him. ‘Come to bed, Jay,’ they said.

‘Who are you? No, for that matter, who am I?’

They giggled. ‘You know who you are,’ said one.

‘Jay Wulf, I suppose,’ he said.

‘The greatest fighter in the world,’ cooed one of them.

‘The greatest lover in the world,’ said another.

‘The greatest man -’

‘With the biggest -’

The final words were gurgled as the room blew away like smoke.

*

‘Get off her,’ he said.

The man glanced behind him to see a gun pointed at his head. ‘What’s this?’ he growled, after a hesitation.

‘Off.’

The man spat, half on the bed, half on the woman. ‘It’s got fuck all to do with you.’

Jay Wulf looked down at her, then back at the man. ‘Lady says no,’ he said simply.

‘Lady,’ the man snorted. ‘When a whore says no she says yes.’

The woman punched him in the side, and he grunted and drew a knife on her. ‘Do that again. Do that again.’

‘Sometimes, sure,’ Jay said. ‘But when this whore says no she means no.’ His gun remained trained on the man, unwavering.

‘And you can tell how?’

‘You can tell by not being a fucking idiot.’

The man moved his knife from the woman’s throat and turned it quickly in his hand, and Jay shot him in the forehead.

He shoved him off the woman and lifted her to her feet.

‘You got blood all over my fucking dress,’ she said.

‘Don’t I get a thank you?’ He holstered his gun.

She looked him up and down. ‘You want a thank you for stopping him raping me? You’re not serious. That’s duty, not heroism.’

‘Not in this place it ain’t. Duties like that, they don’t stay around forever with lack of reward. Aye, well. I suppose.’ He leaned against the wall and spat. ‘You staying here? Want me to take you someplace else?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘What do you want, you want to try your luck too?’

‘Maybe I do,’ he replied. ‘But not tonight, I think. Tomorrow, perhaps. But it’ll be all luck and trying, and nought else.’

He yawned as she scowled. ‘But another whore will do,’ he said. ‘Willing and paid in more than good coin, have no fear. Fact, I think I’ll go for it now, taking your leave miss. Shooting that fella off you and meeting your fine self got my blood up and my dick hard.’

She stared at him in disbelief and anger. ‘You’re aroused from preventing a rape by way of murder?’

Jay laughed huskily. ‘Sounds a lot worse the way you put it. I wouldn’t put too much by it, though. My dick is always hard. It gets hard at someone opening a door, gets hard at another closing it.’

She looked down and said in a scathing tone, ‘it don’t look hard.’

Jay laughed. ‘Aye, down for one minute, out of respect.’ He nodded at her and stood up off the wall. ‘I’ll be going now. Don’t mind him no more’ – he kicked the dead body – ‘I’m sure you can sleep around him. Get some rest. Whores need their rest.’

‘Whores need a day where they aren’t whores.’

‘That too.’ He touched his brow and left, leaving bloody footprints on the wood that got fainter and fainter with every step.

*

He woke up to the tiger once again a few inches from his face, upside down and glaring, with an insistent rumbling kind of purr that was closer to growl. Jay yelled and sprang up, and the tiger watched him disdainfully as he scrambled to get to the uncovered gun.

Jay picked it up and – under the tiger’s watch – slowly put it in his holster. Finding out that he hadn’t been ripped apart after he’d passed out had given him enough reason to believe that his life wasn’t in danger any more. Well, not from the tiger at least. No doubt the rest of this land (wherever the Hell it was) wanted to kill him.

‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said.

The tiger yawned at him. A long yawn, too long by Jay’s count.

‘Are you done? Neither of us, I think, wants to hurt each other. But I mean, well, am I crazy here? You’re a smart cat, aren’t you?’

The tiger licked his lips.

Jay sighed. ‘Be that way. I’m going on. I may be in a new body in quite possibly a new world, but I sure know what hunger and thirst feel like. I feel . . . not good, and I need saving. I need to get to the nearest town, and the sooner the better or I’m gonna die out here.’

The tiger watched Jay stand up wearily and turn away.

‘Leaving me to it?’ Jay said, then shrugged his shoulders and continued on.

Jay was about to pass between two shelves of rock when he felt teeth on his leg. He yelled out and kicked away, and the tiger backed off, snarling.

‘Listen, fuck off!’ Jay said, removing the gun from his holster and waving it ineffectually once more. He replaced it back in its holster and made to move on.

The tiger darted in and bit at his leg again, but this time it just caught the light cloth of his pants. They didn’t rip, but the tiger was dragging him, and Jay staggered, trying to keep his balance.

‘What is it!’ More like a dog than a cat, he thought. The kind of dog move that means something . . . ‘What’s that boy?’ he said, leaning down. ‘Timmy fallen down the well? Ouch!’ He lifted his leg and rubbed it where the tiger had bit him, harder than before. ‘Alright alright! What do you want?’

The tiger padded away a few steps, then looked meaningfully back at him.

‘You want me to go that way? That’s the way I came from!’

The tiger said nothing, but waited impatiently.

‘Let me think for a second.’ The tiger flopped to the ground. ‘Well,’ Jay pondered out loud, ‘if I follow you, you might just lead me back to my starting position, you might lure me into an ambush and eat me . . . although I suppose you could have killed me at any point . . . But you could just be taking me back to your lair, which wouldn’t exactly do me much good, unless . . . unless you know where water is? I’m not going to feast on any raw critter you have waiting for me, I’ll have you know. Then there’s the other hand, I suppose if I ignore you you’ll just keep biting and dragging me, won’t you?’

The tiger nodded.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying! I know you do! Hello!’ Jay waved his hand in the tiger’s face.

The tiger looked at him balefully, then stood up and walked off.

‘Alright, I’m coming. All I’m saying, is if you lead me into a trap, or worse, to nowhere at all, and I die because of you, I’m going to be pretty mad. I’m just saying.’

Jay picked his way back among the rocks, his throat aching. I need drink soon. The tiger has to keep hydrated too. I just wish that Sav woman hadn’t fucked off . . . no doubt a tendency to quickly fuck off has served her well in the past.

She saved me, though. So that must mean at least one person is on my side. Somewhat.

Unless she just wants to kill me herself at a later date.

He remembered the dream. Walking slowly amongst the room of junk and treasure, guns and blades and blood, the room of animal furs and naked, flattering ladies.

Then he remembered what came after, and he knew it hadn’t been a dream, not really.

The third part of my adult sci-fi/western novel The Wulf and the Tiger. This follows directly on from the last part. Please bear in mind it’s a first draft work in progress.

*

He’d discarded what he could only call his shirt – he supposed once upon a time it was a distant relation to the colour white – and wrapped it around his waist, after sawing away his bonds on a rock. They were in bad condition and it didn’t take long. The sweat dripped down his skin, as the white yolk of the purple-frayed sun rose higher in the sky. He’d forgotten to ask for directions from Sav to the town, but he wondered if she’d even have helped. Whenever he thought of her, he got this slightly sick feeling, low down in him. A kind of bristling, impatient warmth that was nothing to do with the sun. He wondered how much of this feeling was him alone, and how much belonged to this body.

Jay Wulf was going the wrong way.

He inspected for the hundredth time what he could make out of his chest and arms. He couldn’t stop – it’s not every day that the body you’ve grown up with, grown wearyingly used to seeing every day in the mirror or whenever you look down, is suddenly entirely different and novel.

Past his hands – which were solid red gloves of skin, trailing past his wrists in flames – most of his skin seemed mottled, a kind of paler Middle-Eastern thing going on for the base, then covered with the same doomy scarlet in twisted abstractions and patterns – if patterns there were.

Burn victim? He wondered. Pigmentation, port-wine birth marks? Somehow he thought not, not with the variety and wildness that these blood stains draped and dappled his skin. He resolved to find a mirror as soon as possible.

He’d hung around the dead men for a while, a task not a grisly as he’d have expected. He took money from their pockets – a handful of round red coins like poker chips. It wasn’t until later that he even thought twice about this.

The men had been a single colour, all hairy and beardy. They looked very barbarous, but he figured they could have passed for half normal Earth-people if you’d stripped them (which he hadn’t). That was until he found the second set of ears half hidden by their hair.

Now, panting under the midday sun as he leaped the land with newfound agility and vigour, he realised that was another thing he should have asked her. He should have asked her if he was human.

He heard a scrabble of pebbles from behind him, and span around. There was nobody there.

‘Show yourself!’ he said, his voice showing the kind of no-bullshit aggressiveness his previous voice had never had.

There was silence.

‘I warn you, I’ve got a gun!’ He meant this as a lie, but then realised he’d taken a gun off one of the men. The same gun that meant to take his life. It was another thing he’d done without really thinking about it, on an autopilot he had no truck relying on, not this soon after an entry into a new world of fucked up.

He pulled the gun out of his holster – another thing that had been there all along. Little fragments of Jay Wulf were revealing themselves to his attention, as though in a queue, all waiting to come into play at their intended time. The pigmentation, the strange pendant hung from his neck, the hair shaved at the sides and long at the top. The array of muscles that shone tan and red and purple in the light. The gathered weight in his loins. The holster on his belt.

And what does that tell me? It tells me I’m the kind of man who is used to carrying a gun.

He’d never shot a gun before. Hell, he’d never even handled one. But now he clutched it with undeniable familiarity, the grip comfortable in a palm that was the driest part of his body. It looked old and worn and ugly, like something belonging to a previous age of the Earth, but it was nothing he could name, short of ‘pistol’. It looked very loud and very lethal.

A tiger slunk out from a boulder. It was black with red stripes; not the red of his skin but a bold, bright scarlet that seemed like jags of red lightning over the fur of the night. The claws – even the teeth were red. It moved calmly, carefully, sweeping its tail in the dust. But its dark gaze didn’t leave his face, and its teeth were bared.

He waved the gun. ‘Get back!’

The tiger stopped, but continued to glare at him. It was crouching now, tense.

‘Don’t even -’

The tiger sprang.

He was bowled over by the full weight of the thing – are all tigers this big?! – was his thought as he fit the ground with a thud. He was surprised to find a lack of savage teeth sinking into his neck. There was hot breath on his face. He opened his eyes tentatively, to see the tiger’s glaring eyes two inches from his. Its claws were gripping him tight, but not puncturing – not yet.

His arms were pinned beneath the weight of the tiger. The gun had fallen from his hand. He couldn’t even struggle – not with those teeth so sharp and so close to his jugular.

For a few seconds there was nothing but the breath of the tiger and the thump of two hearts. He could feel the tiger’s heartbeat through his own chest, and wondered if the tiger had the same sensation.

It roared, a sound that seemed to fill the world. It lasted a long time, and that was one more time that day the newly thinking Jay Wulf would cringe and expect a gory death.

Even now a whimper wouldn’t come. Even at my own demise I’m a hard-ass, apparently. Not a man for whom whimpers come easy.

The tiger’s eyes retreated, the weight lifted. He rolled away and backed up in a crouch. He looked to the gun but the tiger growled, and then went over and sat on it. It never took its eyes from his.

Cats never had the most tell-tale of expressions, but he had never seen such a curious look to one. That it was angry, that was certain, but there was more than that, hidden behind the impassive features . . . Annoyance? Frustration? And . . . confusion? Wonder? The tiger was staring at him with wide imperious eyes as though Jay was a marvel, a profoundly irritating source of amazement, something it’d never really seen before.

Maybe it hasn’t?

Every so often it growled low in its throat, or flexed its claws, or shook its head, as though trying to dispel an illusion. Butif it meant me harm, it’d have done it already.

He stood up. The big cat did too.

‘I’d like my gun back,’ he said.

The tiger shook its head slowly.

He blinked. ‘You can understand me?’

The tiger just looked at him.

‘Okay . . .’ He felt like he was slipping, talking to a tiger. Relax, you’re doing pretty good for someone completely out of their depth.

He took a few steps back. The tiger took a few steps forward.

‘Are you going to follow me?’

The tiger did not reply.

‘Well. What should I call you? Tigger? Stripes?’

Growl.

‘Blackie?’

The growl rose, and so did haunches.

‘Alright alright. I guess you’ll just be a tiger then.’ The tiger laid back down on the gun and put its head on its paws. It finally took its eyes off Jay and sank them to the ground.